The Torrent

The Torrent is an outstanding collection of novellas and short stories written over a period extending from 1938 to 1962.

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The Torrent is a collection of novellas and short stories written by Anne Hébert over a period extending from 1938 to 1962. Any one of these by itself would be outstanding. One thinks particularly of the novella, 'A Grand Marriage.'

As one critic has remarked: "Included under the title, The Torrent, are a group of stories that are charming, except for 'The Torrent' itself, which strikes one with a devastating impact, with an intensity that is overwhelming. This story is one of the most powerful [ ] in the whole of Canadian literature."

Since his birth, François Perreault has lived under the tyrannical rule of his mother, who has taken refuge on an isolated farm, surrounded by forest, to redeem the guilty pregnancy of which he is the fruit. For this woman rejected by her village, redemption can only be real if her child becomes a priest. From an early age, François is therefore subjected to an iron discipline, against which he rebels when, at seventeen, he refuses to enter the seminary. To punish him for his disobedience, the mother hits François on the head with a heavy set of keys, rendering him permanently deaf. Deafness gives him access to the spirit of the estate: the wild world that surrounds the farm. François perceives the torrent’s tumultuous vibration and associates it with the blood roaring in his own veins, an expression of the anger and hatred that leads him to commit matricide. One day, in what will be considered an accident, Claudine Perreault is trampled to death by Perceval, the indomitable horse François admires so much because it has always resisted his mother’s attempts to train it.

When she completed The Torrent, Anne Hébert was unable to find a publisher in Quebec and the book was published in France. To quote the author: "The violence of The Torrent shocked them; one didn't publish that kind of literature; it wouldn't sell." As it turned out, The Torrent won the prize of the Royal Academy of Belgium for the best book in the French language by a non-Belgian, or non-French writer: that is to say, a Swiss, North African or Canadian writer.